Tolman reached for the phone with one hand and her office directory with the other. Rusty Hudson answered on the first ring. She heard the sounds of wind and a crowd of people. “I think you should come to the office,” she said.
CHAPTER
16
Waiting for Hudson, Tolman sat back for a moment, then stood up, walked around the office, walked down the hall to the reception area, then back again. “Come on, Rusty,” she muttered. “Get your ass in here.”
She sat back down at her desk and clicked her mouse a few times. She checked her e-mail and saw the note from Nick Journey.
I have nothing to say at this time. The message had been sent shortly after her original e-mail went to Journey. She moved his reply into a folder she’d created for the case.
Two more clicks, and she checked phone messages. She had forwarded her voice mail directly to the computer, strictly a convenience factor so that she didn’t have to hold the phone when checking messages.
The messaging program showed a single voice mail. It had come in yesterday, early evening. Tolman turned on her speakers and sat back in her chair.
Sixty seconds later, she was sitting up straight, holding her breath. She checked the time of the phone message and compared it to the time of Nick Journey’s e-mail. He’d called her an hour and a half after he e-mailed her yesterday.
“Holy fucking shit,” Tolman said.
She heard steps in the hallway, and a few seconds later, Hudson was at her door, wearing a golf shirt and khakis. It was the first time Tolman had ever seen him without a tie.
“What is it?” Hudson said.
Tolman shook her head.
“Meg?”
Tolman finally looked away from the computer. “I called you about the DOD and the shooters in Oklahoma. I found—Jesus Christ, Rusty, I just picked up this message, right after I called you.” She clicked on the phone message.
“This is Nick Journey,” said a man’s voice, resonant but soft-spoken. Tolman detected no regional accent, remembering that Journey had grown up all over the country.
“You e-mailed me yesterday, about what happened to me a few days ago,” Journey said. “I wrote you back a little while ago, but I … I just…”
There was a beat of white noise, a moment of hiss on the phone line. “I just heard about the Speaker of the House being killed. I think … I think the chief justice is going to be next.”
Another pause. A high-pitched squeal sounded in the background of the recording. Hudson winced at the sound.
“Just a minute, Andrew,” Journey’s voice said, as if he’d turned away from the phone; then his voice was full volume again. “I think the chief justice of the Supreme Court is going to be assassinated, and very soon. I thought I…” His voice trailed off again. Another high-pitched wail. Journey made another sound, as if he were about to say something else; then the line went dead.
“Play it again,” Hudson said, and Tolman did. “Make a copy of that message and bring it with you,” he said after it played the second time.
Tolman pulled out her RIO-issued laptop and fished a USB drive from her drawer. “Where are we going?”
“There is a threat on the life of the chief justice. There will be a threat-assessment meeting. Bring your book on Journey.”
Tolman plugged the USB into her desktop and started copying the file. “Who’s in the meeting?”
“The Marshals Service, the Bureau, and us.”
“But you’ll handle the briefing on our side.”
Hudson shook his head. “No,” he said. “You built the case, you made the contact. You do the briefing.”
The big man turned and strode down the hallway. Tolman finished copying the audio file, disconnected the USB, grabbed her Journey file and laptop. She stopped in the doorway, seeing her shoes under the desk. Oh no, she thought, then: Fuck it. I’m not torturing my feet in those heels for the next God-knows-how-many-hours. Barefoot, she jogged down the hall after Hudson.
“I’ll drive,” Hudson said. He knew how Tolman hated driving.
Like everything else about the man, Rusty Hudson’s car was a paradox. When she first came to work at RIO, Tolman had pictured him as more of a Crown Victoria type, like her father, but he drove a bright blue Dodge Dakota pickup truck with a club cab. Tolman wondered how someone who obsessed over departmental budgets and time sheets could reconcile driving a vehicle that probably got all of thirteen miles to the gallon.
“Where were you today?” Tolman asked. “Ball game?”
Hudson shook his head. “Family reunion.”
She stared at him.
“Believe it or not, I do have family, Meg. If you didn’t call me about Journey’s message, why did you call?”
“This whole Journey thing is tangled up in DOD. There’s some kind of weird-shit deep cover operation going on.”
“Facts, Meg. You need to give me facts.”
As they turned south, Tolman outlined what she’d learned about Michael Standridge and Kevin Lane, and how she’d come by it. “I knew if you went into the DOD database, there would be trouble,” Hudson said when she finished.
“Oh, don’t be such a bureaucrat. This is not about protecting RIO’s ass. Why would DOD go to all the trouble to make sure these guys were legally and officially dead, only to have them turn up going after Nick Journey? I mean, Lane and Standridge couldn’t have faked their own deaths in Iraq, certainly not to the extent that the official army machine has covered it.”
“No,” Hudson said, “that isn’t feasible.”
“So someone with some real juice at the Pentagon had to be involved somewhere. Maybe this Colonel Meares I talked to. Maybe that’s why I was transferred to him in the first place.”
“No. To make two soldiers disappear would take something above a colonel.”
Tolman paused a beat. “You don’t have connections at DOD.”
Hudson smiled. “As you’re so fond of pointing out, I’m a bureaucrat. I have connections everywhere.” The smile faded. “But I’m not convinced that this is some grand conspiracy on the part of the U.S. Army. It doesn’t make sense for them to put these two men to death, officially speaking, and have them under deep cover. They were already Special Forces in the first place. On top of that, why would they attack Journey?”
“To get what Journey has: the document.”
“Whatever that document is, it has been in the ground since 1865. What could possibly warrant the army expending that much time, effort, and money to obtain it? There has to be another explanation, a mistake in data entry somewhere.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ve been over it and over it—they were reported as dead by the DOD, but yet there were no casualties from their unit reported on that date.”
Hudson was silent a moment. “What do you hope to find?”
Tolman lifted both hands, then let them drop into her lap. “I don’t know. But this Journey thing … it started out as an obscure historical find, and now there are somehow two Special Forces guys—dead Special Forces guys—caught on camera going after Journey. I don’t know if these guys faked their own deaths in Iraq and then somehow had the capability to hack in and create a trail that said they were dead … or if it’s actually the army that wanted them to appear dead, and has them on special assignment. It impacts our case either way.”
Hudson nodded. “Perhaps, but it doesn’t seem quite right to me.” He glanced at her. “And right now, we have a different priority.”
They didn’t speak the rest of the way to the meeting. Tolman closed her eyes and leaned back against the car seat. What did the Speaker of the House and the chief justice of the Supreme Court have to do with a history professor and the non-deaths of a pair of Special Forces operatives?
I don’t know, she thought, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.
CHAPTER
17
The Judicial Security Division (JSD) of the United States Marshals Service is responsible for protecting me
mbers of the federal judiciary, including the justices of the Supreme Court. But the FBI has the responsibility for investigating threats made against the court and its members. While the Marshals and the FBI are both under the umbrella of the Department of Justice, the jurisdictional overlap produces gray areas, which can lead to the occasional bout of confusion.
Certainly makes me feel right at home, Meg Tolman thought.
Hudson had called the JSD Office of Protective Operations, and was told that the Senior Inspector in Charge was unavailable, until Hudson made clear that a threat against the life of the chief justice of the Supreme Court was involved, and that the threat was being reported by another government agency. The JSD duty officer promised to track down Senior Inspector Graves as soon as possible.
Hudson’s next call went to the Special Agent in Charge of Threat Assessment at the Bureau, who was on the phone within three minutes. For once not asserting precedence in turf wars, the SAC, whose name was Gabriel Díaz, agreed to have the meeting at the Marshals Service complex in the Crystal City area of Arlington.
Then Tolman, Hudson, Díaz, two other FBI agents, and three people from JSD sat down to wait for the Senior Inspector. He was located in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he had attended the funeral of his mother-in-law the day before. A chopper was scrambled out of New York to pick him up and return him to D.C.: half an hour to get the helicopter to his location, just over two hours in the air from Connecticut to the Crystal City complex.
It was after eleven, and Tolman was napping when one of the other Marshals Service people knocked on the lounge door down the hall from the JSD conference room and said, “Graves is here.”
She smoothed her blouse, rebuttoned the top button, and pulled at her hair, to no avail. Still in bare feet, she followed Hudson down the hall to the conference room. Tolman took a chair, opened her laptop, and plugged in the USB drive.
Senior Inspector Brent Graves was in his fifties, tall and lean, with the kind of graying hair people liked to call “distinguished” and WASP-ish features that made Tolman think of New England prep schools and old money. He didn’t look as if it were late at night and he’d just spent two hours on a helicopter. He was dressed in a white shirt open at the throat and navy blue suit pants. His eyes looked a bit weary, but otherwise he seemed perfectly in control.
“Let’s hear it,” he said. “Who’s presenting?”
Graves looked at Hudson, and the look lingered, as if he was registering Hudson’s size for the first time. Hudson gestured to Tolman, and Graves’s eyes followed.
“That would be me,” Tolman said. “Meg Tolman from RIO.”
“Why is RIO bringing this to us?” said Díaz, a slim Latino in FBI-standard black suit, white shirt, and red tie
“This stems from a case that was referred to us earlier in the week for review,” Hudson said.
“By the Bureau, I might add,” Tolman said.
Díaz glared, and Hudson shot Tolman a Now, Meg look.
“Here’s the background,” Tolman said, and spent ten minutes summarizing Nick Journey. She thought she’d lost a couple of people at the table, but Graves remained sharp and intent on the briefing.
“This call came in to my personal line at six-oh-eight P.M. on Saturday,” Tolman said.
Tolman played the file. “This is Nick Journey,” said the voice.
They listened, several of the group taking notes on legal pads or laptops.
“Play it again,” Díaz said when it finished, just as Tolman expected.
After the second time, a beat of silence passed in the room.
“May I?” Tolman said. Hudson looked at her.
Graves looked down the table, his expression softening. “I’m not sure how to address you. I confess to not being familiar enough with RIO’s operation to know the titles. Agent or Inspector or…” He raised his eyebrows.
“Actually, my title is Research and Investigative Specialist Two. But it would feel very strange for you to call me ‘Specialist,’ so let’s go with just Meg.”
Hudson shook his head.
“But Rusty here is a Deputy Director, if that helps,” Tolman said.
“And did you lose your shoes … Meg?” Graves said.
“No, sir. I just didn’t feel like wearing heels, in case we were here all night.”
“Meg,” Hudson said.
Tolman thought she detected a vague smile from Graves and a scowl from Díaz.
“All right,” Graves said. “Your analysis, Meg?”
“It’s not so much an analysis as a question. I understand that because of the content of the message, we have to be here, and I admit that when I first heard it, it really shook me up. But listen to the sound of the man’s voice. When I think in terms of sound, I consider dynamics and the rise and fall of the voice and the pauses. I think something is going on with this man, something that relates to the document he has, but does that sound like a man who is planning to assassinate the chief justice?”
Graves looked thoughtful. “No, it doesn’t.”
One of the other JSD people, a woman about Tolman’s age, said, “But we can’t base our assessment on the dynamics of his voice. He clearly says the chief justice is going to be next.”
“But he doesn’t say he’s going to do it,” Graves said.
“And he doesn’t mention any kind of reason or motivation,” Díaz said. “He sounds disjointed, like his thoughts aren’t all together. Speaker Vandermeer and Chief Justice Darlington have no connection whatsoever, and he makes a connection there. And trust me, all hell has been breaking loose at the Hoover Building since the Speaker was shot. But the two are apples and oranges.”
“Yes and no,” Tolman said. “As far as their responsibilities, they don’t connect. But remember high school civics? Each of them is the highest official in a branch of the federal government.”
Graves rubbed the bottom half of his face. “True. Tell me about Professor Journey and this mysterious document. He was attacked last week because of it?”
“That’s the consensus of the local and state people.”
“Does he still have it?”
“As of now, we believe he does.”
“What’s in it?” Díaz asked.
“We have no idea at this point,” Hudson said.
“I have to tell you,” Díaz said, “that this whole business of mysterious documents and old guns seems pretty far out. We have a hell of a lot to worry about right now, in the twenty-first century, and it just smells like bullshit to me. He’s trying to get attention for whatever this thing is. Maybe he’s trying to get tenure or something and he thinks this will help him get published.”
Tolman rolled her eyes. “He already has tenure. I don’t think—”
Díaz waved his hand. “Give me some real and credible evidence. Is RIO familiar with the concept of evidence?”
Asshole, Tolman thought.
Graves looked down the table at both Tolman and Díaz, then rubbed his face again. “Do you see anything in Journey’s background that would lead to a threat against the Supreme Court?”
“Nothing at all,” Tolman said. “The man’s a small-town history professor. There’s been no hint of extremism in any of the workup I did on him. He’s had a … well, let’s call it a bumpy life … but there’s certainly no indicator of violence or any kind of political agenda. But I certainly think it would be worth talking to him, to see what he knows.”
Graves stood up. “While the Supreme Court doesn’t get near the threats that the president does, we get our share. They’ll pick up even more when the new term begins, and it’ll be people with the usual issues: abortion, guns, school prayer. Both sides of the issues. Some are worth checking out; most aren’t.”
Díaz looked right at Graves. “Brent, sometimes you’re too diplomatic for your own good. Why would the chief justice be in danger today because of some paper from as far back as the Civil War? Doesn’t add up.”
“I agree that this doesn’t seem like
a real and credible threat against Chief Justice Darlington, but I’m not ready to dismiss it without a bit of follow-up, either,” Graves said, then glanced at one of his subordinates. “We have extra people at the chief justice’s house?”
“Yes, sir. The detail was doubled as soon as we got the call from RIO.”
“Don’t alarm the chief justice. There’s less than a month until the start of the new term, and she’s always stressed this time of year. Plus, her husband has been ill. Make sure the house is secure. I’ll order her a different car. Bring the other one back and comb through it, inside and out.”
“What about Journey?” Tolman said.
“Meg, I’m going to follow your recommendation for follow-up. I’ll send someone from our division here, and they can meet up with a Bureau person from the Oklahoma City field office, and go interview Journey. How far is this little town from Oklahoma City?”
“It’s right on the Texas line,” Tolman said. “A good two-and-a-half-hour drive.”
“I hope they enjoy the scenery,” Graves said, and the meeting was over.
* * *
As Tolman and Hudson left the Crystal City complex, Hudson said, “I’ll drop you off at home.”
“But my shoes are at the office.”
“Surely you have more than one pair of shoes.” He drove for a while and said, “You shouldn’t antagonize our colleagues.”
“They’re not our colleagues. The Bureau, the Marshals, everyone … they all think RIO was just a PR stunt by Congress, if they think of us at all.”
Hudson sighed as he merged onto I-395. “Then why would they send us the number of cases they do?”
“You know very well why they send us cases. These are the cases they don’t want to bother with. It’s sure as hell not because they respect our investigative or research capabilities.”
“You sell them too short. I’ve been watching you for five years, and you do this job so well. You’re the best specialist in the office. You put together your cases brilliantly. But you are occasionally dismissive of our overall mission.”
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